In information technology, a backup, or the process of backing up, can refer to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore to a previous state after a data loss event. Backups may have two distinct purposes: The primary purpose can be to recover data after its loss, be it by data deletion or corruption. The secondary purpose of backups can be to recover data from an earlier time, according to a user-defined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data may be required.